Scent of Own Ink

Sarojini Sahoo in Odisha TV

2011-06-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

A distinguished bilingual South Asian feminist writer, and an associate editor , a feature oriented English journal Indian AGE, who has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by 'Kindle' English magazine of Kolkata and has been conferred with the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award, 1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award and the Prajatantra Award. She is also in the advisory board of Indian Journal of Post Colonial Literature; published from the English Department of Newman College, Thodupuzah, Kerala.

In English ,one novel and two anthologies of short stories have been published to her credit so far . Bengali translation of two of her novels have been published from Bangladesh and in Oriya ,there are eight short stories collections and eight novels in published form to her credit.

She is also a known blogger for her ideas in feminism and has gained world wide fame. Her Blogs are SENSE & SENSUALITY, FEMININE-FRAGRANCE and INDIA

Source: You Tube.

"As if you have been inspired by us by writing the novel..." Says a German poetess

2011-04-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Silke Liria Blumbach, a German poetess, translator, blogger writes a few lines after reading my novel The Dark Abode. I want to share her words with my readers:

"As if you have been inspired by us by writing the novel...

You understand what few people understand: that a very deep love can exist between people who have never met in person.

After browsing the book, I have the impression that people reduce your writing unjustly to the mere aspect of sexuality, whereas you write about love and life in its fullness. Maybe you write about sexuality in a way it has never been written about before by an Indian woman, it may even be a kind of mission, probably it is also a great deal of sensationalism, but it is a reduction, and I can imagine that this reduction distorts also the image people may have of you and that this is not easy especially in Indian society.

"Yet she could feel his presence every moment." - EXACTLY.

We have experienced so many things, and verified them empirically (e.g. by checking the time), which cannot be explained by science.

I wonder whether you or a relative or friend of you has already experienced such a love - your writing describes it all so exactly that it is hard to imagine that all these true, significative and characteristic details come only from your imagination."

Details of Book: The Dark AbodeBook: The Dark Abode

Author: Dr. Sarojini Sahoo

Language: English

Translator: Mahendra Kumar Dash

ISBN: 8190695622

ISBN-13: 9788190695626, 978-8190695626

Binding: Paperback

Publishing Date:07.10.2008

Publisher: Indian Age Communication
Number of Pages: 174

( Online Source for free down load of full novel: SCRIBD

Online Purchase: FLIPKART )

Excerpts from the book 'Sensible Sensuality'

2011-02-09T18:16:00.000-08:00

Title: Sensible Sensuality

Language: English

Genre: Essays

Author: Dr. Sarojini Sahoo

ISBN: 81-7273-541-8

ISBN-13: 978-81-7273-541-8

Binding: Hard Cover

Publishing Date: 2010

Publisher: Authors Press, E-35/103, Jawahar Park, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi- 110 092, email; authorspress@yahoo.com

Number of Pages: 184

Price: 475 INR or 10 US $

Excerpt:

* I can say only in Oriental perspective. I think, sexuality has a major role in understanding feminism. Let us consider a girl’s condition in adolescent period. If she becomes pregnant, the male partner is not blamed for his role.it is the girl, who has to suffer.If she accepts the child, she has to suffer a lot in socially and if she goes for any abortion, she has to suffer emotionally for the rest of her life.In case of married woman, there are many restrictions with respect to sexuality whereas her male partner is free from these restrictions.Even now a days in Oriental countries, you can find most of the married woman are un known about their feeling of orgasm.If a female admits about her sexual pleasure, there may be every chance to misunderstand her as a bad woman by her own husband.She may be misunderstood for having pre marital sex.In the time of menopause, though except some biological phenomena, nothing has changed in sexual life , but a woman has to suffer a lot mentally thinking herself disable for sexually meeting with her husband.I think till now in Asian and African countries ,the patriarchy society has its control over sexuality .So, the women need two type of liberation. One is from financial slavery and another from sexuality. Women are always victims; men are oppressors. I believe in theory that "a woman's body, a woman's right."that means women should control their own bodies and people should take them seriously.( Page 16-17)

* Like anger, fear, hatred, humour, love is also an emotion. This emotion, however, is different from other emotions because material elements like marriage, childbirth, divorce, dating, etc., build up upon this emotion to give a person's life a definite direction and shape. Love is the only emotion that channels itself into paving a path for our life. It is an integral complementarity of men and women, rather than the superiority of men over women or women over men. It is the sharing ness of emotions and of life. I think that it's more important to be a complete human being than a writer, or a feminist or any other label one may be known by but I also realize the reciprocal nature of living and writing. I believe that living gives you material (pleasure, pain, angst, loneliness, joy and what not) for writing while writing helps you interpret your existence in a meaningful way. I live, I write, I grow and live some more and write some more and hopefully grow some more)...That's my theory!(Page 138)

*Monogamy is always a double standard activity by masculine world. It is deliberately an extremist idea which is built into its core rule that men can have multiple spouses but women cannot. Even worse, traditional polygamy is always used by the masculine world to exploit feminine world sexually. Women these days expect and demand to have the same standing in relationships as men. To which polygamy denies and women find a lesser status in such traditional polygamy . Either the polygamy turns to polyandry , where a single woman is sexually used by men or very soon she is rejected by her lover .The purity of love and the emotional bondage does not act in polygamy . On the other hand , by allowing monogamy we make ourselves confined to a double standard system created by masculine world .( Page 33 to 34)

* Our feminist thinker always tries to skip the idea that offspring begging is a natural instinct of a woman and it is related to our ecological and environmental situation .Anything against it may resulted to disaster ,We find , a woman has to pass through a different stage in her life span and there is a phase where a woman feels an intense need of her own offspring .Feminists of second wave feminism have always tried to pursue a woman against the natural law because it is seemed to them that motherhood is barricade for the freedom of a woman . But if the woman has her own working field , doesn’t have it mean that her working assignments would demand more of her time ,of her sincerity and of course of her freedom ? If a woman can adjust herself and can sacrifice her freedom for her own identity at out side her home, then why she shouldn’t sacrifice some of her freedom for parenting, when parenting is also a part of one of her social identity ?And it could also be solved by rejecting the patriarchal role of parenting, .We have to insist the idea of the division of labor in parenting .This equally shared parenting is now common in Western ,but still in South Asian countries we find it as a taboo factor rather because of economic inequality between men and women, our crazy work culture, and the constrictions that are placed on us by traditional gender roles. (Page 40)

*In this so called ‘sex war’, I think, the actual importance of the issues like ‘sexual freedom of a woman ‘ or ‘woman’s right over her body’ had been demoralized and became insignificant. . The sex negative feminists often forget that they accept the sex-negative characterization of feminism that has been imposed on us by people who are not feminists, and who in fact are generally our opponents . On the other hand the sex positive feminists also always forget that the value of sex depends on the people involved, what they want to get out of it, whether they’re able to achieve that, and whether they are causing harm to themselves or others. That requires the ability to think again while they are supporting pornography or prostitutions or BDSM . Sex never was introduced first in Human history as a tool for any exploitation or any hegemony. Sexuality is always an integral part of the personality of every human being. Its full development depends upon sharing ness of the satisfaction of basic human needs such as the desire for contact, intimacy, emotional expression, pleasure, tenderness and love. (Page 43 to 44)

* The writing process is a sexual process. When a writer wants to expose a physical life or an energetic life, a creative tension and a flow of energy is generated in the creative process. This creative tension can be experienced as a sexual tension and the flow of energy creates life or describes a new life. Religion or society never cares for any artistic sensibility as Plato’s domination and so this inherent sexual influence over creativity has also always been denied by our sexual gurus. So, we find there are descriptions of fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism in the writings after the Second World War. We also find our writers/artists/musicians always have an inclination towards their sexual orientation and sexual behaviour and we encounter how much sexual desire they have.(Page60)

* What I want to point out is that Kafka’s relationship with those close to him has always remained under suspicion and through his physical intimacy with other gender (say Gregor’s sister), it kept him away, mentally. This may be why Kafka didn’t find any particular success with relationships in his love life. Unable to reconcile his physical urges with his romantic longings, he had a series of prolonged, probably chaste, engagements that invariably ended in his breaking off the relationship. It makes a clear distinctive reason that the ‘suppressed libido’ of Kafka may have caused him to write a porno book along with all the other masterpieces he created. (Page 145)

* It is interesting to note Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness has been declared as obscene and pornographic. I have never found any sexually explicit descriptions or the so-called ‘obscene words’ in that book. Nowadays, it is unbelievable to think that 80-90 years ago, the author was taken to court. I am never a supporter of ‘porno’ and I always believe that it makes woman a ‘product’ always associated with male-dominant consumerism. But it is also true that every sexually explicit topic is not ‘porno.’ I would be happier if Alan Moore would have used the word ‘erotica’ instead of ‘porno’ for his novel Lost Girls. ( Page 152 to 153)

* If the myths are in any way to be considered as the reflection of ‘social ideas’ of any group or society, then we can say that with the development of patriarchal control over feminine civil rights, the sexual freedom described in those myths was cut down from the women’s world and transferred to the men’s world with anti-feminist moral milieus which gradually made the female a sex object, however powerful they might be in their goddess perspectives. This is a strapping point, I believe, that the sex negative feminists have to think of before raising their voice against the sex role attitudes of the female.(Page 55)

*Though Milton appeared as a pro feminist in his free verse epic Paradise Lost, critics blame him for his misogynist attitude (See: Gallagher, Philip J: Milton, the Bible, and Misogyny; Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr (April 1990), ISBN-10: 0826207359; ISBN-13: 978-0826207357) whereas there was no evidence of misogynist nature of Balaram Das. The sexual right is the main topic for Eve in Paradise Lost. Though Balaram Das wants to skip the sexual topics, still both the poets have made their stand nearer to the social right and social freedom of the feminine masses.It is also an amazing fact to mark that the pro-feminist voice was raised in Eastern world at least hundred years before the Western could think over it. ( Page 130)

*Art is not what you see but what you make others see. What is important is how one views life as a whole and hence, the reader's psyche has indeed a lot to do with how the work is interpreted. I don’t blame Joyce, as some feminist critics did, for being unjust to Nora. Writing is a total difficult and complex process. An author has to make himself/herself a multi-winged personality -- one goes above the surroundings and canvas so that the author him/herself could observe everything with full objectivity. Another enters into the character. And the third one assimilates an author’s self with the character. So, when Joyce tries to paint Molly in Ulysses and Bertha in Exiles, we find not the Nora, but the Joyce with his ‘manly woman’ personality. As Richard Brown explains about Molly, she “surely does represent a new kind of fictional woman: massive, potent and self-possessed. Though few modern feminists have wished to avail themselves of that image of femininity, it was evidently one which Joyce constructed out of his own version of feminist literary tradition, and its obtrusive sexual dimorphism is conceived as a vindication of, rather than an attack on, femininity. ( Page 161)

World Wide Words

2011-02-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

Words are very unnecessary: the sound of silence is the universal refuge.

Some notes on words

"E" is the first common used letter (12.702%) in English, and the second most common letter is “T” (9.056%) and "A" acquired the third position (8.167%).

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What is the longest word in English? It is a name of a protein. The wall here does not support to bear the word limit. The word has 189,819 letters. It is:

"Methionylglutaminylarginytyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutaminyll-eucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanyvalylprolylphenylalanyl-valythreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolyglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylserylleucyllysyl-isoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanylglycylalanylaspartylalanylleucy-lglutamylleucylglycylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucelalanyla-spartyglycylprolythreonylisoleucylglutamiylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylala-nylphenylalanylalanylglycylvalyltheonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanygll-utamylmethionylleucyalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonyl-isoleucylpriIylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylvalyp-henylalanylasparaginyllysylgyycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanyl-gutaminyllcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylavlylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylasp-artylvalyprolylvalylglutaminylglutamyllserylalanyprolyphenylalanylarginylglutaminylal-anylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvaylalanylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleu-cylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginyglutam-inylisoleucylalanyylseryltyrosylglycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylser-ylarginylalanylglycylvalythreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylanylalanylleu-cylprolylleucylaspaaginylhistidylleucylvaylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasarag-inylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylala-nylisoleucylaspartylalanylalanyglycylalanylalanyglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycyseryla-lanylisoleucylbalyllsylisoleucylisoleucylglutamyyylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisole-ucylglutamylprolyglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalaby-lvalylglutaminlylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine".

It is one of over two million proteins.The word has 189,819 letters. It is also called as 'Titin' in short form.

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'Honorificabilitudinitatibus' is the longest word William Shakespeare used in Act V, Scene I of Love's Labour's Lost. It is mentioned by the character Costard. It means “the state of being able to achieve honours." It is also the longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels.

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The least commonly used letter in the English language is "z" and the second least is "q". "E" is also the most common letter in French, German, and Spanish. Friends can access some interesting mathematics to find out the least used word in English from the site at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080620081413AAQVTSc

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Oxford Dictionary of Quotations says that the shortest poem in the English language (by an unknown poet) is titled 'On the Antiquity of Microbes' and contains only this much – Adam/Had 'em.

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"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Above is the shortest short story consisting of only six words. Credit goes to Ernest Hemingway. On a bet, Hemingway once presented his friends with this six words short story.

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Terza Rima is a type of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in three-line format. The first known use of terza rima is in Dante's Divina Commedia. This style has been used by Milton, Shelley, and Byron. The rhyme-scheme is: aba, bab, cdc, ded, etc.

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Cna yuo raed tihs? The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

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Collins dictionary has chosen 102 words and phrases to exemplify a year in the past century and a bit. For example: 1978 test-tube baby; 1979 Rubik cube; 1980 Solidarity; 1981 SDP (ie, the then new and now defunct British Social Democratic Party); 1982 CD; 1983 Aids; 1984 yuppie; 1985 glasnost; 1986 Mexican wave; 1987 PEP (Personal Equity Plan, a type of tax-free savings); 1988 acid house; 1989 Velvet revolution; 1990 crop circle; 1991 ethnic cleansing; 1992 clone; 1993 information superhighway; 1994 National Lottery; 1995 road rage; 1996 alcopop; 1997 Blairite.etc etc.

A similar list produced for the Guardian by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary is like this: 1978 BMX, Teletext; 1979 space invaders; 1980 Reaganomics; 1981 Walkman; 1982 Exocet; 1983 Star Wars; 1984 Aids; 1985 yuppie; 1986 perestroika; 1987 free market, Black Monday; 1988 lager lout; 1989 poll tax; 1990 global warming; 1991 citizen’s charter; 1992 grunge, annus horribilis; 1993 Whitewater, bobbit; 1994 World Wide Web; 1995 Britpop; 1996 ecowarrior, scratchcard; 1997 New Labour.

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Grammars were originated first in Sanskrit : (6th century BC), Tamil (1st century BC), Greek (3rd century BC) and Latin (1 st Century BC) respectively. In 7th Century Irish grammar was originated and that of Arabic followed in next century. It is very interesting to know that Hebrew grammar was originated very lately in 10thh Century only and the first grammar in English began with John of Cornwall in 14 th Century

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Old English(mid-5th century to the mid-12th century) had two numbers, three genders, four cases, remnants of dual number and instrumental case, which could give up to 30 inflectional forms for every adjective or pronoun. Its syntax was only partially dependent on word order and has a simple two tense, three mood, four person (three singular, one plural) verb system. The spelling of Old English is strictly phonetic.

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In all of his work - the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems - Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first invented by Shakespeare by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.

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‘An Alligator skin ’, ‘epileptic’, ‘eyeballs’, hot-blooded’, ‘household words’, ‘obscene’, ‘puking’, ‘skim milk’, ‘the game is afoot’ and ‘worm-holes’ are some words and phrases that don't appear anywhere in English prior to Shakespeare putting them on paper.

‘An Alligator skin’ in Romeo and Juliet (First Folio), Act V, Scene I, Romeo Soliloquy.

‘Epileptic’ in King Lear, Act II, Scene ii, Kent to Cornwall.

‘Eyeballs’ in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene ii, Oberon to Puck.

‘Hot-blooded’ in King Lear, Act II, Scene iv, King Lear to Regan.

‘Household words’ in King Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii, Henry to Westmoreland.

‘Obscene’ in Love's Labours Lost, Act I, Scene i, Ferdinand to Costard.

‘Puking’ in As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii, Jaques to Duke Senior.

‘Skim milk’ in Henry IV, Part I, Act II, Scene iii, Hotspur Soliloquy.

‘The game is afoot’ in Henry IV, Part I, Act I, Scene iii, Northumberland to Hotspur.

‘Worm-holes’ in the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece.

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Various spellings were used at the time of Shakespeare’s marriage with Anna Hathway in the Episcopal Register at Worcester on November 27th 1582 and November 28th 1582- there were at least 16 different spellings of Shakespeare including Shakspere, Shakespere, Shakkespere, Shaxpere, Shakstaff, Sakspere, Shagspere, Shakeshafte and even Chacsper! Shakespeare always signed himself as "Shakspere"

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The Dark Scars of Oppression

2011-01-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

Although Dalit writers have been at work in India for many centuries, the term ‘Dalit literature’ has a specific, currently meaning and can perhaps be seen in those writings. ‘Dalit literature’ describes Dalit narratives depicting the struggle against oppression and has been inspired by African-American literature and movements in the 20th century.

Protests against the caste system and oppression are expressed in a new literature called ‘Dalit literature.’ Poems, short stories, novels, and autobiographies by Dalit writers provide useful insights into the question of Dalit identity. In India, the movement started in Mumbai with the publications of the Maharashtra Dalit Sahitya Sangha in1958, and soon found its place in the mainstream of Marathi literature. Later, the trend shifted to Hindi and Kannada. Currently, it has entered Tamil. But in Oriya, Dalit writing has had a late start compared to its counterparts and its voice has not yet been part of the mainstream.

The poets of Charya Yuga or the Natha sect of saints like Hadi Pa, Kanhu Pa, Tanti Pa, Chourangi Nath, Gorakh Nath, Mahendra Nath or Lui Pa etc, all came from downtrodden social groups and constitute a distinct social tradition in Orissa. But their poems are more philosophical and tantric — religious rather than portraying social oppression. But that does not mean Oriya society is a stranger to caste oppression and other forms of inequality.

There were also many poets from the ‘shudra’ community who raised their voices against the Brahmen hegemony but their writings were not similar in theme and concept to today’s so-called Dalit writings. From Saral Das, the Adikabi of Oriya literature whose Oriya Mahabharat was read for the first time in the fifteenth century to the famous saint poet Bhima Bhoi to the powerful Marxist poet Rabi Singh of the 20th century, a long list of Dalit writers have flourished in Oriya literature. But these writings are not only confined to Dalit oppression in relation to a Dalit caste system. There is evidence of writings on Dalit oppression in Oriya literature from Bhagbati Panigrahi and Sach Routray to Gopinath Mohanty, and many have a theme of such oppression. But these writers do not belong to the lower or untouchable caste. In poetry the Vaishnavite upper-class poets like Dinakrushna Das raised their voices against the Brahmanical bureaucracy, but we can’t place them alongside contemporary Dalit writing. Bhima Bhoi, the tribal (Kandha) religious poet of the 19th century fought against caste and ritualised piety and initiated women in the society.

The only English book I have ever read on Oriya Dalit literature was Paralysed Tongue, an Anthology of Dalit Studies (Pagemaker, 2005). Ironically, this book is edited by two Brahmin scholars: Aswini Kumar Mishra and Jugal K Mishra. While searching for other articles on the net, I found two; one is a long essay by Raj Kumar and another is a blog by Basudev Sunani . Raj Kumar identified only one Dalit short story writer, Ramchandra Sethi, and one of his short stories: Dwitiya Buddha. He counted six contemporary poets: Bichitranand Nayak, Basudev Sunani, Kumaramani Tanti, Sanjay Bag, Anjubala Jena, Mohan Jena, adding an appendage of ‘many more.’ Basudev Sunani’s irregular blogging (ten between April 2009 and December 2009) contains two of his essays, a short story, and a few poems.

Recently, a few magazines and Facebook users have tried to raise the Dalit discourse aiming to make it more active and streamlined. But the main question is: are there a sufficient number of lower caste or tribal writers from Dalit socio-economic classes available in Oriya literature or it will be a movement of middle-class upper-caste writers who are plenty and who constitute the mainstream?

( Published in my regular monthly column at New Indian Express, in its 25 July 2010 issue)

Sexual Politics and Oriya Literature

2010-07-24T22:24:00.001-07:00

Palm leaf script of Gita Govinda

The writing process is a sexual process. When a writer wants to expose a physical life or an energetic life, a creative tension and a flow of energy is generated in the creative process. This creative tension can be experienced as a sexual tension and the flow of energy creates life or describes a new life. ( Source: Sense & Sensuality)

When I started writing in the seventies, very few women writers were in the field and at that time, my theme and topics on sexual politics made the social gurus of the time more worried than ever. That was the time when the cult of domesticity for women started to break down and I raised questions about piety, purity, submissiveness, and the definition of true womanhood through my stories. At that time, I found myself alone, but now, approximately 35 years later, I can see a powerful trend showing published evidence in Oriya literature.

In 2004, young writers began “Dehabadi Galpa,” a movement based on sexuality-based short stories. Saroj Bal, the editor of Galpa Patrika made a collection of short stories where the included authors dared to admit their works had themes of sexuality. Writers included in this anthology included myself and others like Ashish Gadnayak, Saroj Bal, Sadanada Tripathy, Paresh Patnaik, Satyapriya Mahalik, Chintamani Sahu, Paramita Satpathy, Ajay Swain, Pabitra Panigrahi, Nibaran Jena, and Prakash Mohapatra. However, sexuality or erotica had been previously introduced in Oriya literature before this movement in 2004.

For example, the ‘kavyas’ of Ritiyuga in the eighteenth century had deep associations with ‘Shringar Rasa,’ which dealt with sexuality in erotic forms. In the post-colonial period, descriptions of eroticism in a liberal way in fiction was first introduced by Surendra Mohanty. In the sixties, publication of a literary magazine “Uan Neo Lu” included stories by Annada Prasad Ray which were labeled vulgar and obscene. Also in the sixties, Krushna Chandra Behera’s story “Bedi” created controversy and he had to resign from the editorship of Jhankar. In the late eighties, my story “Rape” caused controversy as it dealt with the sexuality of a female and justified it with patriarchal sexual politics. In the nineties, some stories made controversy for making sexuality as a common factor of human life. Pratibha Ray’s “Shapya,” Jagadish Mohanty’s “Nian,” Yashidhara Mishra’s “Rekha Chitra,” and Ashish Gdnaik’s “Bhata” are examples of such stories. In fact, debate about “Nian” continued for long time after its publication.

Another source of long-lasting controversy in Oriya literature was the nude photos of Saroj Bal, the avant-garde Oriya writer. I am still astonished why the media, as well as the critics, considered these photographs as a serious setback in our social values. It is not like masculine nudity was not displayed before, but I think it is the display of masculine nudity in context with Eastern or Oriental culture which worried our male-dominated social gurus. I think, these images have a strong relevance to sexuality.

In Orissa, as well as throughout India, most people mingle sexuality with passion and physical co-adhearance and to some extent, to perversion, with a hidden concept of sin in their puritan minds. But the term ‘sexuality’ has a wider aspect. Sexuality involves not only passion and perversion, but also involves biological or physiological sex, gender, gender identity, gender roles, and sexual orientation.

Sexuality, other than sexual politics, occupies a space in Oriya fiction which is neither quite masculine nor quite feminine, although it is clearly created as a feminine role and desires to be in the masculine role. Currently, we find a remarkable number of women authors writing very bold stories describing this ‘in-between-ness’ as being one of the primary characteristics of their themes and styles. Writers like Paramita Satpathy Tripathy, Mamatamayee Choudhury and Biyot Prajna Tripathy are some new faces who write effectively connecting this in-between-ness as both a monstrous trait and a gorgeous one as well.

Unlike fiction, Oriya poetry supports this sexual discourse. Different from other poets, Aparna Mohanty’s poems represent a blurring of the distinction between man and monster, between nature and science, and of gender categories themselves. Aparna’s poems recognise and celebrate the presence of pure womanhood and feminine attributes in the construction of being in existence in a woman’s heart. Other than Aparna, Gayatri Bala Panda, Sucheta Mishra, and Sarojini Sarangi are among a few poets who have contributed to make Oriya poems rich with sexual domination.

It is interesting that mostly women writers are coming forward in riding the wave of popular interest in women's liberation, identifying taboos as a socially conditioned belief system, masquerading as nature. It is a very sensible and risky notion to demonstrate the truth of life exceeding the body and its passion. Though this segment is limited to few, it could make it as a mainstream wave, though the major puritan mob will always oppose it.

( Published in my regular monthly column at New Indian Express, in its 22 May issue)

The Redefinition of IWE - Indian Writing in English

2010-03-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

In his book, The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, Salman Rushdie wrote, “the ironic proposition that India's best writing since independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too much for some folks to bear.” And Amit Chaudhury replied to that statement in his book Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature, “Can it be true that Indian writing, that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers who write in English, who live in England or America and whom one might have met at a party?”

I choose this debate as a core theme for this essay and will try to analyze the past and future of Indian Writing in English (IWE) with all its pros and cons. I will not only try to compare the writings of past and contemporary writers of IWE but I will also compare their writings with the regional writers of their time and will try to find out the status of IWE and whether it could be able to represent Indian writings abroad. Some of my thoughts may create debate and some readers who are scholars might disagree with my views, but what I have found and realised in my heart will be penned down. And my motto is not to hurt or disfigure anyone’s sentiment.

In The Beginning...

The first English writing by any Indian as it has been appeared so far is Sake Dean Mahomet’s travelogue Travels of Dean Mahomet. This book was published in 1793 from England. Sake Dean Mahomet (Shaikh Din Muhammad) was an Indian soldier from Bihar in the British Army and was carried to Britain by his chief Captain Godfrey Evan Baker after his retirement, as Din Mohammad was a good cook. Dean later learnt English academically and wrote his memoirs in Britain.

But it is exceptional Indian writing as the British colonial rulers were not interested in English education rather they were stressing importance to educate natives in their native ’vernacular’ language. It was actually Raja Ram Mohan Ray (1774-1833) and other social activists of that time who made British colonial Rulers introduce English into the schools as a medium of learning with vernaculars.

Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee were two prominent writers of that time who started to write in English. Dutt wrote epic verse in English while Chatterjee wrote his debut novel Rajmohan’s Wife. The novel was started in serialized form in a magazine from 1864 but did not appear as a book until 1935. It is interesting to note that neither Dutt nor Chatterjee returned back to English writing again and they established themselves as prominent personalities in native Bengali literature.

Toru Dutt, another good example of that time, was a very young (teen) girl when she wrote her poems and novels in French and English. She died at the age of 22 and at the time of her death, she left behind two unpublished novels— Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers (thought to be the first novel in French by an Indian writer) and Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden (thought to be the first novel in English by an Indian woman writer) In addition, she had also written two unfinished volumes of original poems in English entitled Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan.

The Mid-Section...

English writing became more popular with the rise of Nationalism in the later period of the nineteenth century into the early period of twentieth century. The English Language became a sharp and strong instrument with which to express intimate feelings to British rulers. Dada Bhai Naroji wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India where he brought attention to the draining of India's wealth into Britain and Surendra Nath Banerjee started to publish an English newspaper called the Bengali through which he spread liberal ideas and nationalistic messages to the people. Later the freedom struggle resulted in a revolutionary brand of writing by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Ray, Mahatma Gandhi , Aurobindo Ghose, Kasturi Rnaga Iyer, T. Prakasham, and Sarojini Naidu. Besides writing in their ‘vernacular native’ languages, they also adopted the English language to express their sentiment and agony.

These personalities not only expressed their ideas through critical essays, but developed in other literary forms as well. Tagore introduced his Bengali poems to English readers by translation while Naidu’s romanticism charmed English readers through her poems. Mahatma Gandhi’s An Experiment withTruth and Jawahar lal and Nehru’s Glimpses of Indian History and The Discovery of India were all established as jewels of Indian English writings. These writings were not meant for the British readers at all. Rather, they were written for the Indian readers who felt comfortable with English because the English language had taken a position to communicating different native languages and it was no more with any colonial characteristics. English thus became an Indian language and a fluent and easy media in which to express one’s ideas to a greater mass.

Later in the 1930s, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand played a significant role in English writing with their fiction. They three were regarded as the “founding fathers” of the Indian English novel.

Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Untouchable (1935) proves itself as a premier of ‘dalit writings’ in Indian literature. It is the story of a single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet-cleaner, who accidentally bumps into a member of a higher caste. Prominent among his novels are The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940), The Sword and the Sickle (1942), which all were written in England, and Coolie (1945), and The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953) which were written in India. He was among the first writers to render Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English.

Raja Rao was considered a Nationalist novelist. His novel Kanthapura (1938) was an account of the impact of Gandhi's teaching on non-violent resistance against the British. His other novel The Serpent and the Rope is a work dramatising the relationships between Indian and Western culture. The serpent in the title refers to illusion and the rope to reality. Cat and Shakespeare (1965) was a metaphysical comedy that answered philosophical questions posed in earlier novels. Rao borrows the style and structure from Indian vernacular tales and folk epics.

R.K. Narayan (full name Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, (1906-2001)) is one of the most famous and widely read Indian novelists even in recent days. He wrote numerous novels like Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1944), Mr. Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), The Painter of Signs (1976), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), Talkative Man (1986) and The World Of Nagaraj (1990). In addition, he wrote a few short stories about Malgudi, a fictitious semi-urban town in southern India. He was awarded by Sahity Academi for his novel The Guide (1958). In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His style is more descriptive, less analytical, and rooted in a detached spirit, providing for a more authentic and realistic narration where he successfully employed the use of nuanced dialogic prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the nature of his characters.

In the post-colonial period, a tremendous change in the characteristics of IWE has been observed. The ‘societal subjects’ have been diminished and an ‘individual’ has emerged in the writings. Kamala Markanday, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherjee, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Chandra, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Raj Kamal Jha, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharti Kirchner, Khushwant Singh, Vijay Singh, Tarun Tejpal, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikas Swarup, Rohinton Mistry, Suketu Mehta, Kiran Nagarkar, Dr. Birbal Jha ,and C. R. Krishnan have been some notable writers of the post-colonial period who have made IWE more popular in abroad than in India. But they subject IWE to a debate whether or not their writings are totally Indian?

Some of writers like Kamala Markanday, Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai have moved themselves abroad and away from the country. Hence a question is raised as to whether their writings can be treated as authentic Indian writings? Rajendra Yadav, a noted Hindi writer once complained, “The IWE take a touristy look at India, like Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics, where he's simply a tourist who doesn't know the inner psyche of the people or the more clever device Vikram Seth uses in A Suitable Boy, the pretext of looking for a bridegroom, which takes him to different locales and professions. It's a creatively written traveler's guide. They travel into our culture, describe a bit of our geography; their total approach is to westerners: a third-rate serpent-and-rope trick."

Nobel Prize winner and one of India’s Diaspora writers, V.S.Naipal once alleged that IWE writers are responsible for creating a body of literature in exile mainly written by writers and read by readers living abroad. Altaf Tyrewala, the author of No God In Sight, also criticizes these NRI writers, who place themselves as front liners in the eyes of Western readers and Western media and that these writers live in the First World and write about the Third, traveling for a month or so to India to gather material on which to base their writings.

There were a few western writers starting from Rudyard Kipling to Mark Tully, Dominique Lapierre and William Dalrymple who have remained the major time of their lives in India, wrote their texts on India and Indian people, but our critics never assimilated them with IWE writers as their race was different. Hari Kunzru, author of The Impressionist and Transmission asked a serious question if we deny these writings as Indian writings, how and why we include the writings of Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Hari Kunzru and the Desais as India writings, while the first group came to India and the second group moved away from India? Is Indian writing a form of racial identity? Kunzru claims that he is not an Indian writer but a British one, thus categorically denying any claim that Indians may make of him being an IWE.

Amit Chaudhuri, who judged the Man Booker Literary Prize for fiction in 2009 along with Andrey Kurkov and Jane Smiley, says, “For me, the position of the outsider is of great importance to the health of any society. My anxiety is that in the last 20 years, India, typically for a globalizing country, hasn't theorized a position for the outsider or for the misfit or for failure. Its rhetoric is concerned with success in various ways. In India, everybody is some way in some kind of nexus of power. We need to regain that space for the irresponsible.” And what better way to seek that elusive vantage point than to move away from the nexus and observe it with a dispassionate eye.

Presently...

Today, writers from Russia, France, Italy, and even Latin America, any day, write in English, but their writings are considered as masterpieces of global writings. Their writings are abundantly available through English translation and have been labeled as Russian writing or French writing or Italian writing, or Latin American writing. But when the question of Indian writing arises, critics run for Rushdie or Vikram Seth, forgetting that Indian writing has a long tradition.

At a reception organized at Santiniketan to pay homage to Rabindranath Tagore's literary genius after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tagore said, “The insult and infamy that was my lot to suffer at the hands of my country were not inconsiderable in quantity and so long I had borne them with patience. In this context, I have not been able to understand clearly why I received honor from outside. I did not know that God, whom I had offered homage sitting on the Eastern shore, would extend his right arm in the western shore to accept the same...Europe has given me the garland of honor. If it carries any value, it lies in the aesthetic sense of the men of culture of that country. That has no connection with our country.”

It can be understood easily, how our authentic Indian writings are being ignored by ‘we the people’ who placed ourselves in the chair to judge what is Indian writing and what is not. Our misjudgment not only make the actual writings ignored but also represents the mask as Indian Literature beneath which India remains invisible to global readers. When we read Garcia, we could encounter Latin America, with all its essence, cultural milieu, lives and tradition. But in bestsellers, IWE in western countries basically portray the lives of Indian Diaspora and their alien culture.

Post-colonial literature cannot be intended by neglecting literary works in the original languages of nations. The post-colonial literature has been termed on many connotations. Common questions frequently asked are, what is the new cultural identity of the country after independence has been achieved? Who really is in power here? Why and how does an independence day really mean independence? And where does an individual fit in this condition of the country and how does he/she make a living? In fact, actual Indian post-colonial writings that are accessible with regional writings and English writings get, in some extent, alienated from the people and country.

So, this seems hard to skirt, when Nirmal Verma, the noted Hindi writer, gives a cautious thump on the back to the IWE big league, saying, “My language links me to a tradition of 5,000 years, to the medieval writers, the Bhakti poets, to the Sanskrit classics, and it also connects me to the philosophical texts of Indian culture. But English writers are deprived of all this unless they are very sensitive. Only one percent of IWE are able to link themselves to the culture of their region, its real life, its metaphors, and images.”

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, Past Continuous by Neel Mukherjee and Escape by Manjula Padmanabhan were shortlisted for the Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008 and the award was given jointly to Amitav Ghosh and Neel Mukherjee. Ghosh had to share the award with Mukherjee because, it is told, the debut novel of Mukherjee is the first attempt in Indian writing to explore alternate sexuality, though Vikram Seth has been discreet but not secretive about his views on gay and bisexual orientation, depicting this alternative sexuality in his novels The Golden Gate and A Suitable Boy in very obscure way. Similarly, Jhumpa Lahiri’s attempt to portray the complexity of one’s identity concerning with one’s name opens a new door for Indian literature through her novel The Nameshake .

But these trends prevailed in other Indian writings earlier than Seth or Lahiri or Mukherjee. From the 1950s, one can discern a change in the style of Indian writing. The Indian writers became bolder and stronger in expressing their emotional needs. Marxism, Existentialism, Magic Realism and all modern trends of global literature are not untouched in Indian writings and in comparison to English writings, these Indian Literatures are not lagging behind any more.

Jagadish Mohanty is a prominent personality in Oriya Literature and is considered a trendsetter in Oriya fiction. He has also been regarded as the prime figure in the introduction of existentialism to Literature. His novel Nija Nija Panipathwas, published in eighties, where the protagonist, a Brahmin young boy from coastal Orissa, flies to the plateau region of Western Orissa and purchases a job card of a fake tribal name Samaru Khadia from a job provider mafia group and is employed at the coal fields there. The protagonist begins to find everything regarding his identity seems to be in crisis as he is not ‘he’ but another person with a total different identity. This novel was serialized and was published in book form much earlier than the publication of Lahiri’s The Name Shake. It is only because Mohanty has not been translated that his credit had been limited to Oriya people only.

Similarly in 1927, a Hindi writer, Pandey Bechan Sharma, better known by his pen name Ugra (extreme) had published a book, an anthology of ten short stories entitled Chocolate. These stories are on gay sexuality. The book provided a nationalist construction of Indian identity, especially in relation to ideas of India’s past, gender, masculinity and sexuality, and of Hindu-Muslim, and India-foreign relations. Recently the English translation of this book has been published by Oxford University Press. So, it is only our critic’s ignorance to declare Vikram Seth or Neel Mukherjee as premier writers of gay sexuality in literature. These are only two instances.

Bringing It All Together...

This essay does not aim to prove the superiority or inferiority of either English writings or regional writings. Rather, it aims to assimilate English writing into the mainstream of Indian writing with a status of Indian identity. ‘Indian-ness’ should be a theme constructed only for detecting Indian writings.

So for R.K. Narayan’s time, IWE could never be considered alien from Indian writings. Neither Tagore nor Amrita Pritam were treated as vernacular writers. Kamla Das successfully managed to write both in English and Malayalam. Nobody asked what language a writer was writing; either he was Krishna Chandra or Sadat Hassan Monto. They were writing in Urdu but their writings were available easily in Hindi and English as well. IWE at that time was not termed with lingua franca but with the characteristics of Indian-ness. But recently, Indian writings in other languages, which are available in English, are held off, keeping in mind that they are not written in English.

English enjoys the status of the link language to the outer world and also is a necessary instrumental media to communicate. Presently and after globalization, it has remarkably placed its significance and never anyone today could define its tenure as colonial or outsider. While speaking about Indian writings, how can anyone omit the writings of Fakir Mohan Senapati, Premchand, Amrita Pritam, T. Shivshankar Pillai, N.T Vasudevan Nair, or Mahashweta Devi when their writings are all available in English?

However, another view prevails in the mind of some intellectuals that the English language alienates a text from its culture of origin. Once the Indian author Shashi Deshpande expressed her ideas that the English language is in some ways harmful to Indian culture not because it is the language of the ex-colonizers, but because it has become the language of the privileged, elite classes in India. She admits that when she writes in English she is aware that her work will reach out to only a few English-speaking readers, most of whom will be thinking the way she does. The problem is that if an author writes in English with the purpose of changing social traditions, the language excludes the poor and down-trodden whose involvement is most needed, and English has no place in the daily lives of those people

Another problem is the fact that writing in English also means using a language in which most, or at least many, of its characters do not speak. However, for many Indian authors, English is no more than the medium through which they express themselves and through which they can reach an international audience. But it is worth noting that English is the only source where a link can be made with global literary fields; although in India, the readability of literature in English shows a minuscule acceptance despite the rapid growth of literacy in English and in incomes of urban Indians.

So, it should be a wise decision to term IWE not as Indian English Writing, but as its original form of Indian Writings (available) in English.